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1 of scientific procedures where the public safety is 
2 concerned. 
3 After illustrating the unscientific basis for 
4 some of the revisions, we will turn to the question of 
5 how to rectify the problem. 
6 Firstly, a great deal of weight is placed on 
7 semi-authorized reports of discussions held at closed 
3 scientific meetings attended by a small number of 
9 selected participants. The outcome of these meetings 
10 in general appears to represent the best guesses of those 
11 present, most of whom were interested parties. The 
12 proceedings of the meetings were not published for 
13 inspection and criticism of the entire scientific 
14 community before they were accepted as a basis for 
15 lowering the safety precautions. 
16 In normal scientific practice, meetings and 
17 discussions of this kind are considered appropriate, not 
13 only as a basis for choosing more promising concepts for 
19 future experimental investigation. However, the Falmouth 
20 Conference of last year was used as the basis for down- 
21 grading the containment requirements for cloning foreign 
22 DNA in E. coli . This revision has been proposed without 
23 waiting for the results of the experiments now in progress, 
24 which were designed, under contract by NIH, to test the 
25 assumption on which the revision was based, namely that 
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